In climate news, people for some reason continue to debate whether the warming that we’re seeing today comes from human action or some sort of natural cycle. This study should help put that question to bed.
An ice core about two miles long — the oldest frozen sample ever drilled from the underbelly of Antarctica — shows that at no time in the last 650,000 years have levels of the greenhouse gases carbon dioxide and methane been as high as they are today.
The research, published in today’s issue of the journal Science, describes the content of the greenhouse gases within the core and shows that carbon dioxide levels today are 27% higher than they have been in the last 650,000 years and levels of methane, an even more powerful greenhouse gas, are 130% higher, said Thomas Stocker, a climate researcher at the University of Bern and senior member of the European team that wrote two papers based on the core.
Several ice ages have come and gone in the time span covered by this ice core. I thought that I’d gotten pretty jaded about climate, but these numbers still make me nervous. If we have greenhouse gases significantly above anything in the last 650,000 years then it stands to reason that we’ve set in motion changes that haven’t happened in that time span. I don’t know what they will be but I can say with certainty that humanity doesn’t benefit from that sort of change. Civilization flourished because we had a comfortable niche of climate stability for the last 10,000 years or so, and despite all of our advances we still depend on that niche. You can’t mine food.
Boombo
Well, isn’t that wonderful.
I think I’ll go add an addition to my Y2K shelter. Might come in handy yet.
neil
Why aren’t we hearing the _good news_ about the greenhouse effect?
ppGaz
Thanks, neil, you stole my line.
But cereally, people HAVE published “good news” about the greenhouse effect. Didn’t you know? The increase in CO2 will plump up the plants and increase crop yields! The warmer winters will cut down on fuel consumption!
I kid you not, I have acually heard people on talk radio saying these things. To listen to them, you’d think that the most patriotic thing we can do is burn more carbon-based fuels as fast as possible.
—-/
This seems to be yet another brick in the wall of complete stupidity and wrongness on the part of our beloved Bush administration. How many strikes do they get before they are out?
Tim F.
When somebody tells you that, you can respond that crops are generally C4 plants while weeds are C3. That means that crops do better in low CO2 because they have an extra biochemical step (the Hatch-Slack cycle) to concentrate carbon in their tissues while weeds don’t, so the weeds have to make do with what’s available in the air. That means taht the more CO2 there is in the air the better weeds grow relative to crops.
Boombo
Indeed, the loss of arable and livable land to rising sea water will be compensated by the warming of other regions, leading to longer growing seasons and more hospitable climates throughout the world.
Get your Yukon beach front property now, before the rush.
neil
The most convincing defense of the greenhouse effect that I have heard has been that it has saved mankind from extinction due to global dimming.
stickler
Oh, come on. Define “benefit.” If you mean, “able to live under the sea,” then I think we’d benefit mightily.
There would have to be fewer of us, of course, but that too could be defined as a “benefit,” especially if I get to have any say in who gets left out.
RSA
For some historical context, it’s also useful to know that modern human beings (homo sapiens sapiens) have only been around for 100,000 years or so. The core sample goes back six times the duration of what we think of as recorded history, and sixty times the duration of our species. This should make a spike right now look extremely suspicious, even for skeptics.
RSA
Oops. Reverse the six and sixty above.
Bob In Pacifica
I did not produce carbon dioxide with that, that woman!
Dexter
Levels of green house gases rise and fall over time. There is no sound science that proves that this is a result of our consumption of fossil fuels.
RSA
Oh, right, as if cave men were building green houses back in the stone age.
CaseyL
They were! They did!
Only, the green houses were made of stone, and so not only did no sunlight come in but the whole thing would collapse on a regular basis (mortar also not yet having been invented), sometimes with the would-be gardener inside (“I don’t understand why my tomatos are doing so poor – YIKES! Yaaagggghhhh!” thudthudthud squish).
All those “burial cairns” anthropologists have found? They’re really primieval attempts at indoor gardening :)
Anderson
Dexter, did you READ Tim’s post? Go back and do that. Now look at your comment.
ppGaz
Dexter is a snarkbot.
Seriously.
Say, whatever happened to DougJ?
CaseyL
I heard a presentation recently from a scientist researching how global climate change will affect our area (the Pacific NW).
Among the things she said was, that even if we halted all production of greenhouse gases right this minute, global climate change will continue. The only question was how extreme the changes would be over the next 20-40 years (when the most dramatic perturbations and extinctions will take place) and then over the next 400 (when entire biomes “catch up” to the extreme changes). She showed graphs showing best-case and worst-case scenarios. “Best case” was an average temperature change of +1-3 degrees F; “worst-case” was +3-5 degrees over the next 20-40 years.
If we do nothing, we’re in for the worst-case. If we do our best to change our transportation and industrial processes, we might have the best-case. But the genie is out of the bottle and there’s no stuffing it back in.
Among the things we can kiss goodbye are wild salmon and millions of acres of forests in the Northwest.
Sine.Qua.Non
Because, for some unknown reason, the CO2 advocates want the vegetation to overload so much that there is no more oxygen output. Kidding. You mean you don’t like/like the concentration of heat and gases over the city you live, lasting longer and longer all the time, and trapping all that nasty stuff like an inverted bowl over the city?
I just love science-speak….sigh…
By the way, they are reporting much higher CO2 outputs than normal (within Paris) from the trees alone.
Sine.Qua.Non
Dexter? Have you been listening to Bush Junk-Science advocates and their mock-science reports again?
Bend over so I can spank that crap out of your….mind.
Dexter
Global warming is a scam perpetrated by left wing scientists with a radical environmentalist agenda. There is no sound science to support it.
Slartibartfast
I blame myself. Sorry, everyone; I just can’t help it.
Walker
The phrase “sound science” is a scam perpetrated by right wing think tanks with an economic agenda. There is no epistimological basis to support their relativistic claims.
TallDave
but I can say with certainty that humanity doesn’t benefit from that sort of change.
No, actually, you can’t. We don’t what amount of global warming is necessary to stave of the next Ice Age, or whether if not for anthropogenic climate changes we would be in an Ice Age now, which would quite assuredly end Western civilization at anything near our present level of technological development. Even the Little Ace Age devastated crop yields; a real Ice Age would annihilate them. Most populated areas would become uninhabitable; upwards of 90% of humanity would starve to death; only the barest minimum of technological civilization would survive.
There are still tremendous amounts of uncertainty regarding how much GW is actually anthropogenic and what causes Ice Ages; there are strong correlations to solar activity, independent of CO2 levels. It’s not inconceivable that in 10-20 years, we’ll suddenly be pumping CO2 into the atmosphere as fast as we can to prevent global cooling.
Now, I know what many of you are thinking: “TallDave, you stupid wingnut tool of the oil companies, no one has ever worried about global cooling! The whole idea is stupid! As stupid as you! Wingnut!”
Au contraire, my friends. In 1975, the concern was quite real, and was featured in Newsweek with dire predictions of global famine:
GW is probably bad in the short run, so some climate-related controls probably make sense, but in the medium term we don’t know (witness the change from 1975), and in the longer run it’s probably beneficial to the extent it prevents Ice Ages. But it’s a mistake to assert we know anything for sure.
blogReeder
ppGaz, you’re a complete and utter idiot. Where does it say that the carbon dioxide rise ONLY occurred within the last FIVE years? You’re so stupid it sickens me. Are you going to use the precious Kyoto treaty as evidence? You dolt. You’re a bottom dweller. Go back to the DU. Spineless cretin.
Dexter
Great post, Tall Dave. That’s what the liberals won’t admit, that global warming — *if* it even exists — is just as likely to cool the climate as to warm it. It could be good for the planet in the end. There’s just no way of knowing. And when there’s no way of knowing, we certainly shouldn’t waste billions of dollars “staving off” something that might be good for us all.
It’s best to wait and see what we think when some sound science finally comes in on this topic. In the meantime, we shouldn’t do anything rash.
Jim Jones
My favorite theory these days concerns the oceanic conveyor — Arctic glacier melt and salination differentials. It’s a hoot! The ultimate outcome is . . . a new ice age!
TTT
“Now, I know what many of you are thinking: “TallDave, you stupid wingnut tool of the oil companies, no one has ever worried about global cooling! The whole idea is stupid! As stupid as you! Wingnut!” Au contraire, my friends. In 1975, the concern was quite real, and was featured in Newsweek”
Newsweek? Wow! You don’t say!
The scientific community never believed in or warmed about human-induced global cooling. 1970’s era fears of imminent anthropogenic global cooling were wholly the domain of layman crap sources like you’ve cited: Newsweek, Time, and books by Isaac Asimov. Pointing at them would be like someone arguing 10 years from now that the publication of “Jurassic Park” was evidence that scientists of the day were trying to clone dinosaurs.
To anyone who disagrees with me: I challenge you to cite five (5) peer-reviewed and published articles from contemporary science journals in which real scientists warn other scientists in science-speak that humans are inducing global *cooling* and that it will have bad effects on our culture in the forseeable future.
Assuming that can even be done, my response will be to cite one thousand (1,000) such articles representing the scientific community’s recognition of the reality of global warming.
I would further note that by and large the same politicians and pundits who try to pooh-pooh and postpone action on global warming, are those who a decade ago did the same thing on ozone depletion. They use the same ignorant rhetoric, the same outrageous conspiracist slanders, the same meaningless spin terms like “sound science,” and the same creationist-type obsession on small areas of uncertainty to try to undermine foundational facts. And they have the same complete lack of scientific documentation on their side. But no, no, apparently there’s a “controversy” then and now, because they want there to be one!
Tim F.
I’m willing to bet that you don’t understand a word of it. I’ll even give you a heads-up before you run off to google an answer – the ‘conveyor’ is known as global thermohaline circulation. The theories that it may trigger an ice age have some basis in reality; can you say what they are? No. Nor can you say why it’s wrong.
Germ theory also sounds silly. Quantum dynamics, ridiculous. Don’t expect to be taken seriously if you’re scared by silly-sounding theories that you don’t understand.
Jim Jones
Some basis in reality? I think ‘salination differentials’ is your first clue. Then it’s sinking water that pushes the circulation or the lack thereof that turns Britain into Siberia. Freshwater melt dilutes the surface salt content that slows the sinking. Can’t say it wouldn’t happen anyway. Human-induced rising temperatures serve as an accelerant. Close, Mr. Serious?
BIRDZILLA
Its all that hot-air from GREENPEACE and AL GORE this global warming stuff is all a lot of hogwash
scs
What I don’t hear about that often is that the greenhouse gasses are not just from cars. I saw that only about 42% of them come from cars, the rest, somewhat equally, coal (for electricty probably) and natural gas (for heating prob). Even if we eliminate all the SUV’s in the world we might not make that big of a dent. Since most people in the world will probably achieve an modern industrial lifestyle someday (driving cars, using air conditioning), the best solution is to tamp down the global population. Perhaps if we sustain at this population, and combine it with some energy saving tech, we can sustain the current amount of gasses and the current climate.
TallDave
TTT,
Did you even read the post? “Layman crap” like Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration? I’m not pawing through 1970s journals to prove it, but Newsweek doesn’t throw crap out there.
As I said, there are legitimate concerns with global warming, but there is a lot we don’t know and it is far from a foregone conclusion that the Earth will be significantly warmer 50 or 100 years from now than it is today. Climatology is the farthest thing from an exact science.
Tim F.
Not bad. The key is that ocean circulation redistributes heat from the equator to the poles. If we shut down certain parts of ocean circulation then the redistribution won’t work so well and for a while the equator will heat up while the poles will cool. Eventually polar ice cover will spread to the point where we get stuck in an albedo feedback trap, where the Earth reflects more energy back into space than it needs to keep warm.
It’s wrong because ice ages usually end when CO2 builds up from volcanic eruptions to the point where warming can kick us out of the albedo trap. Since we’re already well past the CO2 levels that ususally kick us out of an ice age, an ice age isn’t going to happen.
Not your finest post, TallDave. Would you stand by that statement, come hell or high water? Think about it.
About the journals I’ll save you the time. You won’t find any papers in credible journals warning about ‘global cooling.’ It was a pop culture phenomenon. If you want to know more about why Michael Crichton’s book is full of hot air, click through here and here and here.